Islamism

The last issue of Action for Solidarity went to press two days after the aircraft attack on the US. At the time We believed the British left had condemned the attacks. That was not quite right. All of the British left have described the events as horrific, of course but most have not made an unequivocal condemnation. Rather they have condemned the “tactics” of the attackers(Socialist Party) or said they condemn the attack “because the actions will not take forward the struggle against US domination by a single step...” (Workers Power). The Socialist Workers Party did not want to use the actual...

The progress of Iraqi forces in their effort to re-take Mosul has gathered pace. Many Daesh fighters have been pulled out of the city to consolidate their power back in the rest of the terrain they control. Daesh have used suicide attacks, carried out a diversionary operation in Kirkuk, and tried to halt Iraqi forces with clouds of toxic smoke from a burning sulphur plant; but it still seems unlikely that their fighters will be able to resist the combined forces of Kurdish peshmerga and the Iraqi army, backed by US and UK airstrikes. Several Christian villages have now been taken on the east...

The Algerian socialist-feminist Marieme Helie-Lucas responds to Deeya Khan's film Islam's Non-Believers , which was broadcast on ITV on 13 October. For the past three decades, we have been witnessing the implementation in politics of the concept of perversity in psychology. Truly, this is a case study. I first realised this during the “dark decade” in Algeria, in which around 200,000 people became victims, many of armed fundamentalist groups, with women constituting a large proportion. Following an inexorable process, these were the steps taken by the fundamentalists: targeted assassinations...

Kelvin MacKenzie is a loudmouth, a bully and political thug. For years, during the 80s and early 90s MacKenzie edited the populist, Tory rag, the Sun. He was responsible for the gloating headline “Gotcha” after a British submarine killed 1,200 young Argentinian soldiers and sailors by sinking an old warship, the Belgrano, which was steaming away from the Falkland Islands during the 1982 war. MacKenzie commented, “The fact that the enemy were killed to my mind was a bloody good thing and I’ve never had a moment’s loss of sleep over it.” MacKenzie has probably never lost a night’s sleep in his...

The Socialist Workers’ Party organise an annual festival, “Marxism”. Although somewhat reduced in size after the SWP split in 2013 over an alleged cover-up of sexual assault committed by a leading member, the Marxism festival is still one of the largest regular events of the UK far left. Unfortunately, the event showcases everything that is wrong, un-Marxist, and self-defeating about the politics of much of the far left in the UK. This year’s opening rally for Marxism festival is entitled “The fight against racism, austerity and war”. Some may baulk at being lectured on anti-racism by a group...

Last November, the Turkish Islamist Justice and Development (AK) party won a victory at the polls. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s thin-skinned Islamist president, and an increasingly intolerant persecutor of his many critics, had refused to accept losing the AK majority in the June general election. He ramped up the war on the Kurds in the Turkish south east and then ran on a platform of defending the security that he himself had undermined. Recently, in May, Can Dündar and Erdem Gül of the daily newspaper Cumhuriyet got five year prison sentences for writing about the Turkish security service...

On 25 April Xulhaz Mannan, the editor of Roopbaan, the country’s first magazine for lesbian gay and transgender people, was hacked to death in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital. Homosexuality is illegal in Bangladesh. This is the sixteenth murder in a series of Islamist machete killings over the past three years. Other targets have included secular bloggers and liberal intellectuals. Responsibility for all the attacks has been claimed by Islamic State or Ansar al-Islam, a local chapter of al-Qaida. Sheikh Hasina, leader of the Awami League and Prime Minister since 2009, has said she will not be held...

We republish commentaries from three Algerian feminists on the recent "Hijab Day" in Paris. Introduction By Marieme Helie-Lucas On Wednesday, April 20 2016 , some students at the prestigious Paris Institute of Political Sciences which prides itself with educating France’s elite, organized a "Hijab Day", a replica of the worldwide event that was initiated in 2013. It is supposed to help non-veiled non-Muslim students realize how discrimination affects veiled women. This will no doubt come as a surprise to many English-speaking readers who still believe that veiling is legally banned in France...

I was very interested to read recent articles and correspondence regarding the government’s Prevent strategy (Omar Raii, Solidarity 390, Patrick Murphy, Solidarity 391, Jim Denham, Solidarity 394). As part of being formally inducted into a new role, I had the pleasure of receiving a session on Prevent. This consisted of a heavily prescribed and standardised script and DVD presentation. It was clear the tutor was not allowed to depart from the script, expand or engage in discussion. I was a little surprised that the “main terrorist threat to this country” is still regarded as being from Al...

Omar Raii ( Solidarity 390) and Patrick Murphy ( Solidarity 391) both draw attention to the shortcomings and potential dangers of the Prevent programme, aimed at countering “extremism”/”radicalisation” in schools and colleges. It does indeed seem to be the case that in some instances Prevent has been implemented in a heavy-handed manner by over-zealous and/or ill-trained teachers. I can also agree that Prevent is potentially a threat to free speech - discouraging free and open discussion of the issues surrounding terrorist ideologies and thus making it more difficult to counter them. However...